Billy Joel – Piano Man

Piano Man is the second studio album by American artist Billy Joel, released 1973.

Joel's second album, released in November of 1973, and the first of Joel's albums to be released by Columbia Records, who would release all of Joel's subsequent albums. Recorded and released after Joel's re-location to Los Angeles after the failure of his first album and disputes with his label Family Productions, the album has a distinct country and western feel in instrumentation and subject matter in comparison with Joel's other output, similar to contemporary works by Elton John and Eagles. The album was a success compared to Joel's debut, charting at #27 on the Billboard Chart, on the strength of the single "Piano Man", a semi-autobiographical of Joel's time working as a musician in a piano bar between recording contracts: the song became a Top 40 hit (becoming a Top 10 hit in neighbouring Canada), and became Joel's signature song. The album itself has been certified 4x Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.

"Songs In The Attic, along with "You're My Home" (which was released as a single and has a music video produced for it) and "Captain Jack", another fan favorite that lead to Joel's g with Columbia Records after it became a local hit in Philadelphia when Joel played the song during a radio concert recorded at Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia.

A promo video appears to have been created for the title track around 1977, possibly for a television show: a better-known music video was created in 1985 for the track alongside its appearance on The Video Album - Volume I.

Along with the rest of Joel's catalogue, the album was remastered and re-released in 1998, including a multimedia component that included a music video for "Piano Man".

A 2011 Legacy Edition of the album included an edited recording of the concert as a bonus disc: the concert also included live versions of unreleased tracks "Long, Long Time", "Josephine" and "Rosalinda". Of the three songs, only "Josephine" has seen a release as a studio recording, as a bonus track on the release of My Lives: the studio recordings of "Long, Long Time" and "Rosalinda" remain unreleased except through various bootlegs.